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Monday, October 12, 2009

Last week, I made a slight update to my blog. Specifically, the following disclaimer has been removed: "This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer." No, this is not a change in Google's employee blogging policy -- two weeks ago I decided that October 8, 2009 would be my last day at Google.

After 4 years, 2 months, and 1 day, it was finally time for me to move on. I remember spending hours on The GLAT and other puzzles Google advertised in MIT's student newspaper, hoping they would somehow increase my chances of getting the one SWE job I wanted so badly. When I finally scored an on-campus interview during my MEng, I read at leastthreebooks on software interviews and puzzles because I wanted to be prepared for anything.

Somehow I made it through the process and was given a job offer as well as the choice of which office to join. Without hesitation, I chose Mountain View because I wanted to be in the thick of it at Google HQ. On the survey we got asking about which areas we would most like to work on, I checked off a handful of boxes, but also wrote: "If Google is working on a calendar product, then I would prefer to work on that." On my first day of work, not only did I learn that Google had been stealthily working on a calendar product, but that I was going to be responsible for building much of its UI -- working at Google really did seem like a dream come true!

Eight months later, that little calendar product finally launched (which was my one, and only, all-nighter at Google). Shortly thereafter, we moved the company off of Oracle Calendar and onto GCal (and there was much rejoicing!). I really loved working on Calendar, but somewhere in there I had decided to move back to the east coast and because someone else had simultaneously come along and decided it was important that projects not span across offices, it was really hard for me to keep working on Calendar.

To solve that problem, I moved offices again, this time to the other side of the world in Sydney. There I met many friendly, upside-down people whose curious idiomatic expressions made their way into my weekly snippets. As a bonus, I also got a front-row seat to the inception of Google Wave (which was an exciting mix of rebellion, chaos, and AJAX).

But whatever, I wasn't distracted by the reinvention of communication because I was busy working on Tasks! It was sort of like working on Calendar in that it was the #1 feature request since it had launched, but it was a lot more like working on Gmail because that's what we actually integrated with first (you'll notice we did manage to take care of that Calendar integration thing later). Tasks was fun, but exhausting. One of the many things Google has taught me is that building simple things is often extremely complicated and Tasks was no exception. (I think I've spent at least one man-month trying to figure out the best way for the cursor to move up and down between tasks, but that's a topic for another post.)

After we had integrated Tasks with almost everything (Gmail, Calendar, iGoogle, iPhone/Android, XHTML mobile phones), I decided that I should take all of the knowledge I had amassed working on Apps and contribute it to the greater Apps good, so I joined the Apps Infrastructure team. I like to think I made some good contributions there, but only time will tell if the things I put in place will last.

It's only been a few days since I've left, but now that I'm on the outside, I already feel like a boy standing on his tiptoes, reaching up to to the display window of a toy store, desperately trying to get a glimpse of the exciting things that lie within. Every time I hit a lapse in web surfing, my first inclination is to open a new tab to check my work email, but I then I glumly hit ⌘-W and go back to whatever I was doing.

It's not so much that I miss going to work, but the feeling of being in the know. One of the main reasons I decided to leave Google was misgivings about it becoming such a big company, though admittedly, so far Google has continued to do innovative and disruptive things, such as the YouTube Symphony Orchestra and Chrome Frame. I just miss being able to preview what's in the pipeline.

At Google, I was able to work with many sharp people, launch cutting-edge products, and reach millions of users. My career there took me around the world, and my experiences there have shaped me as an engineer. I am grateful for my adventures at Google, but like college, after 4 years [2 months, and 1 day], it is time to graduate and move on.

So what are you to do now that you've quit Google? I'm curious where an Ex-Googler might want to work after a giant like Google. For some, Google seems like it can be the end all of all dream jobs. Btw, the 1 man-month was totally worth it -thanks!

I run a non-profit debating web site debatewise.com and we're organising an event around the Copenhagen climate change conference in December. In essence, we're forming a panel of 1,000 young people from 100 different countries and we will ask them to debate the issues that arise from the conference. Some people will create the debates, others will vote on them. The idea is to get a measure of what young people around the world think of events in Copenhagen and to create a set of (hopefully) well researched pro and con arguments that others can refer to when they want to make up their mind.

Clearly Wave is the best tool to hold these debates. I met Steph Hannon at a GTUG event in London and amazingly she agreed and has given us 1,000 invites for panel members to debate in Wave.

So I was wondering... as someone with clearly a huge amount of experience in Google, great technical skills and with possibly a bit of times on your hands, would you be interested in helping us develop the extensions/gadgets and robots we need to make the project a success?

We've got a group of about 14 people helping at the moment and you can find us on a couple of public Waves entitled "Using Wave to debate climate change".

I'm sure you probably want to spend some time sitting on a beach catching up on all those books you never got round to. But just in case...

Happy to answer any of your questions on the Wave or at dc[at]debatewise.com

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